Kate was bullied at her £30,000 'insidious' girls' school 'for being too skinny and meek'

All smiles: Kate Middleton on her final day at St Andrew's prep school in Pangbourne

Kate Middleton may have been forced to leave a leading public school by ‘insidious’ girls who wrote her off as skinny and meek, it has emerged.

The 29-year-old spent only two terms at Downe House before leaving in April 1996 for Marlborough College.

As a day girl, not a boarder, she was in the minority in the cliquey environment of a girls’ school, it is understood. And former pupils say her reticent manner and gangly appearance made her a sitting duck for more assertive classmates.

The revelations come ahead of a book which claims to lift the lid on why Miss Middleton’s parents withdrew her from Downe House, where fees are £10,000 a term.

But more lurid claims that female tormentors smeared the 13-year-old’s bed with excrement as part of a targeted hate campaign were last night denied by close friends of Prince William’s fiancée.

Jessica Hay, who shared a dormitory with Miss Middleton after she moved to Marlborough at 14, is reported to have made the allegations when interviewed for the new biography.

Last night, she insisted that Miss Middleton confided in her about cruelty at Downe House during late-night heart-to-hearts.

‘She said that there was a group of girls that called her names and they stole her books and stuff – little things like that. They rounded up on her a bit because she was quite a soft and nice person…

‘When she used to go to lunch she would sit down with people and they all used to get up and sit on another table.’

But Miss Hay contradicted her reported claims about faeces when told that Miss Middleton normally made the journey home to Bucklebury in Berkshire each day – and was unlikely to have regularly used a bed at Downe House.

Lurid claims: Kate Middleton with Jessica Hay, right, who was interviewed for a book about Miss Middleton's school days

Miss Hay, who has left her job at a law firm to concentrate on selling her story, claimed she had been misquoted in a News Of The World story previewing the book, called Kate, which is due to be published by best-selling author Sean Smith on May 2.

She said: ‘I found it quite unfair. I didn’t even get any payment for it. My friends are going to be thinking, “She’s sold herself out”.’

However Mr Smith confirmed: 'This was a recorded interview with Jessica and she has not been misquoted.'

Last month, the Mail revealed the significance of Miss Middleton’s decision to select an anti-bullying charity as a cause that ‘resonates’ with her and Prince William.

The inclusion of London-based Beatbullying in the couple’s new charitable foundation was understood to be a subtle admission that she, like two out of three pupils, suffered at the hands of bullies. One 29-year-old, who was in Miss Middleton’s year at Downe House, said this week: ‘Tall and shy – those were her most memorable attributes.

‘You didn’t get much impression of a personality really. She was unrecognisable as the person she is now.’

Another schoolmate said: ‘She was fairly quiet and very nice... She didn’t enjoy it because she was a day girl in a school that was 90 per cent boarders.’

And a third said she appeared to suffer from eczema, which is known to flare up when sufferers are stressed. This claim is thought to be backed up in the new book.

At the weekend Miss Middleton’s former headmistress insisted there was no ‘serious’ harassment, but described the ‘catty’ atmosphere and classroom pranks that could have left her feeling ‘like a fish out of water’.

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Susan Cameron, who was in charge of Downe House for seven years, told The Mail On Sunday: ‘Yes, there would be teasing.

‘It’s all part of the normal competition of growing up, of establishing a pecking order.

'I think it’s fair to say Kate was unsettled and not particularly happy'

Susan Cameron, former Downe House mistress

‘Girls are cliquey by nature and they can be rather cruel…They can sense those who are slightly weaker, or who haven’t shown their strengths yet, and it’s those girls who are likely to end up being picked on or teased.

‘Boys will have a bit of a spat and knock someone over but girls will be more insidious and catty. They know where it hurts. I’ve seen my fair share of that. Any school that says they don’t have any bullying at all is probably lying. It depends how you define it.’

‘I think it’s fair to say she was unsettled and not particularly happy. Maybe in Kate’s case she just kind of went quiet and didn’t say anything.’

Teenage kicks: Miss Middleton went on to much happier years at Marlborough. Here she is pictured at a house party with friends from the school in 2000

Miss Middleton had been content and popular as a boarder at St Andrew’s private school in Pangbourne until she was 13, before moving to Downe House in Cold Ash, Thatcham, near her parents’ home, in September 1995.

One source told Mr Smith: ‘In our peer group she was regarded as a nonentity. All the social-climbing girls – and there were lots of them at Downe House – thought she was not worth bothering with.’

Royal sources are furious that Miss Hay has made a series of dubious allegations. It was she who said that Miss Middleton had a poster of Prince William on her wall at school – which Miss Middleton denied in an interview last year.

A close friend of Miss Middleton’s said of Miss Hay last night: ‘She is not and never has been a friend. Many claims are just fantasies.’

St James’s Palace declined to comment.

MIDDLETONS REBRAND AMID CLAIMS THEY'RE 'CASHING IN'

A number of seemingly wedding-related products have been removed from the Party Pieces website of Kate Middleton’s parents and rebranded.

They have also renamed the remaining ‘British Street Party’ products as the ‘Best of British Party’ range, in an apparent attempt to distance the products from the celebrations surrounding their daughter’s wedding.

British Street Party products went on sale only six weeks before the date of Miss Middleton’s upcoming marriage to Prince William.

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Kate Middleton was bullied at £30k girls school 'for being skinny and meek'